


The Apex and The Bank Car

by GeneralVee



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27198235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneralVee/pseuds/GeneralVee
Summary: Simon is bored, so Grace suggests a raid.
Relationships: Simon Laurent & Grace Monroe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	The Apex and The Bank Car

Simon was in his room, hard at work on another squadron of soldiers. He'd memorized already just how many to put together of each faction, where each would stand once the whole scene was put together. Just on the off chance he forgot a particular detail, he had his mostly-complete novel out, opened up to the pages that described what he was building and set aside for reference.

One nearby table in particular had been set up with a roll-out mat that had faux grass glued to the upward-facing side. A heat gun to warp the unlying material and some stray rocks had been used to give the terrain some character. At the far end it became more rugged and less grassy, leading to a 'mountain' of glued-together rocks. Simon had painted the differently-sourced stones, along with the visible bits of the mat, all the same shade of dark grey so it matched.

The top of the mountain was relatively flat, because Simon hadn't gotten around to making the cave entrance that he envisioned at the top of it, where the evil leader of the Nulls had been the whole time. He was as cowardly as the real thing, just like how the false conductor was hiding at the end of the train.

He got the soldiers' base colors down, setting them aside to dry. He stood and stretched, frowning at the table lamp as he did. It probably wouldn't work for the lighting he had envisioned, and he had yet to come across something that would be suitable.

There were other tables with previously-finished dioramas set up to depict other important scenes from his novel, but this was the first one where he was concerned about using the lighting for additional ambiance.

He could hear the soft din of children playing and screaming just outside. Curiously, he went to the window and peeked through the blinds, just in time to watch one of them wipe out on a bike. The kids gathered around burst out into raucous laughter. He snickered, but stopped peering out soon after, returning to his seat.

He looked over at the soldiers, but they weren't dry yet. He considered working on the actual novel they were based on, too, but the idea didn't appeal to him at the moment. He needed to wait for true inspiration to strike before writing about the penultimate Battle of Esmoroth. After wracking his brain for something else to pass the time, he eventually settled on going to see what Grace was up to.

The kids moved out of his way as he wandered out of the game store and along the side of the mall's lobby. He had his hands tucked away in his hoodie, was watching the ground ahead as he walked.

When he passed by Grace's room, he glanced up through the window to see that she was trying, once more, to find a cape that worked for her. After a spin she caught him staring, and blew a raspberry at him before smiling. He gave her a small smile back as he watched her toss the cape aside and walk over to her door to crack it open and peek out at him.

"You need somethin'?" she questioned him. "Or are you just here to stare at me?"

Simon flushed, feeling caught in the act despite that not having been his intention. He glanced away with a shrug. "Just waiting for the paint to dry, so I thought I'd see what you were doing."

"And here I had you pegged as the type to watch paint dry," she teased lightly as she came out of her room to approach him. "If you're that bored, we could go on a raid."

"We?" Simon echoed, unable to keep the surprise and anticipation out of his voice.

Grace laughed and threw her arm over his neck, pulling them side-to-side. "Sure, why not!? It's been a while since we ran a raid together."

"It sure has been," Simon agreed. Ever since the Apex had grown past a certain point, they'd started to run their raids seperately, in order to run them more often overall.

He smiled fondly at the memory. That had been a good one. The car had been themed after an old-timey diner and they had been able to eat pizza for a week afterwards.

"It'll be fun! Besides, didn't you say that a new car had gotten shuffled in nearby, just the other day? New car means we better go in full-force. Who knows what's in it~"

"Hm, yeah," Simon hummed thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "Better safe than sorry, and safety's found in numbers, so... it all makes sense to me."

"That's right! Now, you round up yours, I'll get mine, and then we'll meet up at the fountain and go check out the new car," she instructed him swiftly before bounding away, presumably to go find kids willing to go on an impromptu raid. The day was still young, so there would likely be many volunteers.

Simon returned to the kids that had been playing outside of his room. They quieted as he approached, recognizing his status as the second-in-command. "Any of you wanna go on a raid?" he bluntedly asked. The hush deepened momentarily before it suddenly snapped.

A chorus of agreeable cheers rose up around him, as a few asked if they can go grab others, friends of theirs. He nodded as he told the assembled group, "Go find as many to join us as you can, we're meeting at the fountain in 10!"

"Yes'sir," they all said, and the majority also saluted to him, which made him proud. Then they scattered, and he headed to where the main fountain was. One of the kids merely followed him there, a girl with wavy black hair and thick glasses named Amanda. Simon remembered her because she had once asked about one of his earlier dioramas. She didn't seem inclined to make many friends, he had noted.

Grace was already there, with a small selection of the kids Simon knew she actually favored. He recognized Lucy, if only because of her eyepatch. He still felt a little bad about that incident. After all, he'd been the one to invent the Harpoon Packs.

"I thought we were bringing more than this," Simon said to her, after a quick count revealed their current group was only 7 heads, even including Grace's and his own.

"Well, is this all you brought?" she retorted, crossing her arms as she leaned in to stare him down after looking at the girl who had followed him. Simon crossed his own arms and huffed. Amanda watched them warily as she shuffled nearer to the kids who were closer to her age.

"They'll be here," he assured her. Just then, one of the boys he'd dismissed came running up, with two of his friends close behind.

"Told you we weren't late!" one of the new boys huffed as he shoved at the boy who had led him there. "Dummy," he then spat. The two boys glared at each other in a standoffish way.

"Hey!" Simon barked, snapping their attention away from one another. "Fall in line!" he ordered, and they rushed to do so. "One of the first rules in a raid is that we don't mess with other passengers. Especially each other! Is that understood?"

"Yes'sir!" two of them said, including the one who had been pushed. But the pusher was still sulking, he hadn't answered along with his friends. Simon focused on him.

"You're off the raid," he told the younger boy. "Get out of here. We'll be busy enough with enemy nulls, we don't need to be watching out for you as well."

"Whatever. Raids are stupid, anyway," the boy muttered and then stormed off. Simon groaned, rubbing his face momentarily to sooth the annoyed flush that had appeared. Grace chuckled at how flustered he had just gotten over a kid.

Soon enough, though, a few more teams of children had arrived. Simon quickly went to work sorting them into more or less equal squadrons, by combining groups of friends. In his experience, placing friends together increased the cohesion of a squadron. Each squad was also given a name, usually a favored animal as hastily agreed upon by the squad. He made the oldest in each group the commanding officer, as well.

By the time he was done with that, he discovered that he practically had a whole army of children, neatly organized and assorted. Grace whistled lowly as she looked over his handiwork. "Whatever's in this new car," she said, excitedly, "has no clue what's coming. This is gonna be our biggest raid yet."

Simon grinned to himself in satisfaction. Meanwhile, Grace had neatly climbed atop the fountain's center, and was delivering a rousing speech to the assembled raiding party.

"Today's gonna be a day of victory!" she cried out. Kids had already started cheering. "We're going to take another car for the Apex!" she promised, "And any greedy null that tries to stop us..." she paused for the theatrics of it as she leapt forward, landing on the edge of the fountain so she could loom over, grin, and end her speech with, "will be utterly crushed under our might."

The kids were hyped. Even Simon couldn't stop grinning if he tried, which he didn't. "So who's ready!?" Grace asked of the group. Tiny fists were pumped into the air.

"We're heading 2 cars back," Simon murmured to her, just loud enough for her to hear over the cheering. Grace shot him a smile and a nod, then pirouetted in place to point out to the back entrance of the mall car. Kids immediately broke the lines they'd formed to rush ahead, swarming around and then past the fountain.

"Hey, the formation-" Simon began, but Grace clapped him on the shoulder.

"Let 'em tire themselves out." she suggested. Simon groaned in disapproval. "We'll do marching once some of them lose their excess energy," she added on. At that, Simon rolled his eyes and sighed in a sign of reluctant agreement.

They then set off after the barely-contained army of children. Luckily they had all remembered the rule about the train doors, not to open or close them without express orders from either Grace or Simon. Grace instructed two of them to do so, and then set the group forward with a flourish of her harpoon.

The next car was one that they'd already done recon on, discovering that it held nothing terribly dangerous or even particularly exciting. Still, Simon wasn't keen on letting the troops move about so chaotically. He knew Grace didn't mind as much, though, and wouldn't listen to him on the matter. So he kept his mouth shut.

Luckily, the walk through the next train car was mostly uneventful. Already some kids were losing their initial steam, and were walking as well. They'd dubbed this the River-Crossing Car, because that was the only major obstacle. A vast, seemingly endless plains, with a single major river that split it into two halves. Simon and the recon team he'd earlier taken had already built a rickety bridge using supplies from elsewhere, a move that had earned them points since, for many of them, it wasn't actually the right solution.

Luckily even the children that had ran furthest ahead had paused at this bridge, unnerved by the way it swayed with the powerful current. Grace hummed and hawwed in her usual thoughtful way as she approached it.

"It doesn't look very stable," she warned Simon. "This many bodies might break the bridge."

"Single-file, maybe?" he suggested, coming to stand beside Grace as he looked at the bridge and realized her concerns were valid.

"Yeah, maybe. I think we should hold hands, too. Just in case," she added on.

"Huh?" Simon choked briefly, immediately blushing. "I don't- how would that help?"

Grace gave him a blank look. "If we all hold hands, and the bridge breaks, then anybody who falls in can be pulled out right away," she explained, with a clear tone of 'duh' behind her words.

"Oh, you meant everyone-" Simon murmured, then blushed more as he cut himself off, rubbing at the back of his neck self-consciously. "I mean, of course that's what you meant."

"Of course it is," she assured him. Then she spun to the gathered kids and announced her plan. Before long they had a nice chain of linked hands built up. Grace extended her free hand to Simon. He took her hand, staring at the contact. Then a soft tap to his other hand stole his attention.

He looked to see that it was Amanda. She blinked up at Simon owlishly through her thick glasses. "I couldn't find anybody else to hold my hand," she stammered, already looking glum as if she was in trouble.

"Which squad are you in?" he asked. He'd have to remember who else was in that squadron and talk to them-

"I, uhm, didn't get into one. I guess maybe you didn't notice me?" she muttered, looking down at her feet as she shuffled nervously. Simon wracked his brain only to realize that she was right. He couldn't remember assigning her to a particular squad earlier. There'd just been so many kids to manage, and if anything he had paid more attention to reining in the rowdier ones, not as concerned about the quietest, well-behaved ones.

"Simon, just hold her hand and let's get this show on the road," Grace hissed. Simon winced and nodded, swiftly offering his free hand down to the little girl.

"Alright. But if you're with me, you're gonna have to take lead position. Can you manage that?" he asked her, all business and none of the sweetness that Grace would have used to explain that. The girl took a breath to steady herself, then nodded bravely as she grabbed onto Simon's hand.

Gingerly, the group inched across the bridge, hands tightly grasped to one another the whole way across. They didn't bunch up together, not enough for either Grace or Simon to stress about it too much. Soon, they had the whole army on the other side of the river. A small pause was allowed for everybody to briefly celebrate, and then they set off again.

This time Grace and Simon were clearly leading, and the ones following had bunched up into something almost resembling a proper formation. The new car was just ahead, and before long the two leaders of the Apex were standing before its entrance.

"No marks," Grace noted as she looked at the door. A previously-explored car was generally marked, to show other Apex members that it had already been looted. No marks meant this was a relatively fresh car, at least for their purposes.

She unlatched and threw the door open, revealing... a bank's lobby. Grace blew a raspberry in disappointment, already not expecting much in the way of useful loot. But the kids had already begun the raid, rushing in en masse to tackle and harrass the pencil-themed denizens. Two or three at a time would work together to hoist one up, and then they would drag their points across the wall to draw.

The denizens made noises as if it was hurting them, but they all knew better than to feel bad. It wasn't anything other than their right to do this. At least the kids were having fun. She glanced around until she spotted Simon, breaking pens off of the chains that attached them to the desk and pocketing them. Obviously he had a use for writing supplies, so she left him to it.

Figuring that she'd have fun with it, Grace went further on in, intent on finding a vault and finding a way in. Afterall, this was a sort of heist. However, at some point one of the denizens managed to hit the robbery alarm. A wailing sound filled the air.

Heavy iron bars slammed down to block off the doors and plexiglass partitions that led to the area behind the main counters. Grace would have left it alone at that development, but there was a more concerning aspect to the situation- there were still kids on the inside of the barricade, who had gotten in before the alarm had been tripped.

As they caught sight of Grace, the kids all crowded around the window she was closest to. "We're trapped!" one of the girls wailed.

"Don't worry, sweetie. We'll get you out," Grace promised in her kindest tone. Then she glanced back to Simon and called out his name, which he immediately responded to. "We've got a situation here," she told him as he came jogging over.

"Have you looked for a way to turn it off?" he wondered, then grasped onto one of the bars and tried to yank. Unsurprisingly, it didn't budge.

"He wouldn't tell us!" the same girl was replying to both of them. As Simon kept trying to pull, now with his feet planted to the wall for maximum leverage, Grace angled her view into the employee area to see that there was a particularly professional-looking pencilman laying on the ground below the kids, splintered in half just below where his suit top ended.

They must have tried interrogating it and gotten a little too rough. "Check his pockets and desk," Grace suggested to the kids. Maybe they'd find something useful, plus it would keep them busy instead of panicking. Then she turned to the scene Simon was making and told him curtly, "And you, try something else!"

Simon sighed, letting himself slump to the ground momentarily before he stood up. He started to look around the lobby area instead, particularly up at the tops of the walls. Then he smiled to himself as he saw what he was looking for.

"The vents!" he called as he ran over to the nearest one, bending down to turn his gravitational shoes on before clambering up to it with ease. He produced a screwdriver from one of his pockets and jimmied it open, then climbed on in. Grace walked up to the vent and waited expectantly underneath it.

She didn't worry about whether he'd get lost. Simon had a knack for navigating, especially in cramped, mazelike situations. Sometimes it was downright extraordinary, the way he could remember exactly where they'd already been and how far they'd gone in a particular direction. Not that she'd ever say it aloud.

In a few minutes, her attention was briefly pulled back to the counter partitions when she heard the kids cheering as Simon presumably found his way into there. That was followed by a lot of metallic shuffling as they were climbing in and following him out.

Just a few moments later she was helping them drop out of the lobby vent. One by one, they dangled briefly, so she'd grab their waist and set them aside for the next one. Simon was the last to drop out, unassisted as he was tall enough to not risk an injury from the fall.

Once he stood up straight, Simon showed Grace something in his hands, a small collection of golden jewelry. "I found these in a safe desposit before I found the kids," he explained as she took and inspected them.

Truth be told she thought they were beautiful, exactly her style. Eye-catching, but not gaudily so. "Eh, I guess they're okay," was what she told him, though she did put on the earrings and necklace. The rings she pocketed, since they unfortunately didn't seem to be in her size.

By then the raid was starting to conclude. Everything that someone had wanted had been taken, and the rest of the bank was trashed. The pencil people with used-up graphite had apparently 'died' while others were snapped cleanly in half. Somebody had started a pile of paperwork on fire that was starting to spread.

Grace gave a whistle that got everybody's attention and commanded them, "Time to pack it up! Another successful raid for the Apex!" before leading on a short cheer. The kids left the car behind shortly thereafter in high spirits, comparing their new numbers and chattering amongst one another.

They managed to get back without incident the way they'd gone, by crossing the river car. Grace decided to let the kids, and Simon, go ahead and do what they wanted to, rather than running the usual post-raid ritual of offerings. Instead, she went to her room, to one of her boxes where she kept the offerings that had actually made it into her 'special stash.' There she placed the rings that didn't fit, as well as the necklace. The earrings, however, she decided to keep wearing for a little longer.

All in all, it was a pretty good day, and the exertion and excitement of that big raid would ensure that later, after Grace and Simon had served up dinner, everybody would sleep soundly.


End file.
